The City Let Down From Heaven

On the contrary, you say: What I hope for from him is itself the proof that the two are different — the kingdom of God, held forever, in heaven. Your Christ, on the other hand, promises the Jews their old condition back, with their country restored, and, when this life’s course is over, rest in the world below, in Abraham’s embrace. What an excellent God, who gives back once he is appeased what he took away in anger! What a God you have — one who both wounds and heals, who creates calamity and makes peace! What a God, merciful even down among the dead! I will have something to say about Abraham’s embrace in its own place. [a]

As for the restoration of Judea, which even the Jews themselves expect exactly as it is described, misled by the names of places and countries — it would take too long to set out how the figurative reading applies spiritually to Christ and his church, and to its character and its fruits. Besides, I have worked the subject through in another book, which I call On the Hope of the Faithful. And at the moment it would be beside the point anyway, since our question is about what is promised in heaven, not on earth.

But we do admit that a kingdom is promised to us on earth — before heaven, though, and in another condition of life. It will come after the resurrection, and it will last a thousand years, in the God-built city of Jerusalem, “let down from heaven,” which the apostle also calls “our mother from above.” And when he says that our citizenship is in heaven, he is treating that citizenship as a real city there. Ezekiel knew of this city, and the apostle John saw it.

The word of the new prophecy, which is part of what we believe, records that a picture of this very city would be put on show as a sign before the city itself appeared. That prophecy has just now been fulfilled, during an expedition to the East. Even pagan witnesses testify that in Judea a city hung in the sky early every morning for forty days. As the day went on, the whole outline of its walls would gradually fade, and at other times it was gone at once.

This city, we say, God has provided for receiving the saints at their resurrection and refreshing them with an abundance of every truly spiritual good, to make up for what we despised or lost in this world. It is only just, and worthy of God, that his servants should have their joy in the same place where they were also afflicted for his name.

This is how the heavenly kingdom runs its course. When its thousand years are over — the span within which the resurrection of the saints is completed, some rising sooner and some later according to what they deserve — then comes the destruction of the world and the burning of everything at the judgment. We shall be changed in a moment into the substance of angels, clothed with a nature that cannot decay, and so carried off into that kingdom in heaven we have been talking about. And you treat it as though the Creator had never predicted it, as though it proved Christ to belong to the other god, as though he were the first and only one to reveal it. Learn, then, that the Creator did in fact predict it — and that even without a prediction it has a claim on our trust where the Creator is concerned.

What do you make of this? Abraham’s offspring, after the first promise that they would be like the sand of the sea for number, are also destined to match the stars of heaven. Are these not the marks of two arrangements, one earthly and one heavenly? When Isaac blesses his son Jacob and says, “God give you of the dew of heaven and of the fatness of the earth,” are there not examples of both kinds of blessing in his words? In fact the very shape of the blessing here is worth noticing. With Jacob — who stands for the later and better people, that is, for us — the promise of the dew of heaven comes first, and the fatness of the earth afterward. So we too are invited to heavenly blessings first, when we are separated from the world, and only afterward do we find ourselves in the way of getting earthly ones as well. Your own Gospel has it the same way: “Seek first the kingdom of God, and these things will be added to you.”

But to Esau the blessing promised is an earthly one, to which he adds a heavenly one after the fatness of the earth: “Your dwelling shall also be of the dew of heaven.” For the arrangement of the Jews — who were in Esau, the earlier of the sons in birth but the later in loyalty — was at first steeped in earthly blessings through the law, and afterward brought round to heavenly ones through the good news, by faith.

When Jacob sees in his dream the steps of a ladder set on the earth and reaching to heaven, with angels going up and coming down it and the Lord standing above, we will venture — rashly, perhaps — to take it this way: that by this ladder the Lord has appointed in his judgment that the way to heaven is shown to men, so that some may reach it and others fall from it. For why else, the moment he woke from sleep and shuddered at the place, does he fall to interpreting his dream? He cries out: “How terrifying this place is!” And then he adds: “This is nothing other than the house of God; this is the gate of heaven!” For he had seen Christ the Lord, the temple of God, and also the gate by which heaven is entered. Surely he would not have mentioned a gate of heaven if heaven is not entered under the Creator. But there is now a gate provided by Christ, which lets men in and brings them to glory.

Amos says of this, “He builds his ascents into heaven” — certainly not for himself alone, but for his people too, who will be with him. “And you shall bind them about you,” he says, “like a bride’s ornament.” Accordingly the Spirit, admiring those who soar up to the heavenly realms by these ascents, says, “They fly like kites; they fly like clouds, and like young doves, to me” — that is, simply like a dove. For we shall, as the apostle says, be caught up into the clouds to meet the Lord — the Son of Man, who is to come in the clouds, as Daniel says — and so we shall always be with the Lord, as long as he remains both on the earth and in heaven. And against those who are thankless for either promise he calls the elements themselves as witnesses: “Hear, O heaven, and give ear, O earth.”

For my own part, even if Scripture held out no hand of heavenly hope to me — as in fact it does again and again — I would still have grounds enough to presume this promise too, from the earthly gift I already enjoy; and I would look for something heavenly as well from the one who is God of heaven as much as of earth. I would believe that the Christ who promises the higher blessings is the Son of the one who had also promised the lower ones; who had given proof of greater gifts by smaller ones; who had kept back for his Christ alone the announcement of a kingdom that was — perhaps — unheard of, so that while the earthly glory was proclaimed by his servants, the heavenly one might have God himself for its herald.

You, however, argue for a different Christ from the very fact that he proclaims a new kingdom. You ought first to produce some example of his generosity, so that I have no good reason to doubt this great promise you say we ought to hope for. In fact, before anything else, you need to prove that a heaven belongs to the one you declare to be a promiser of heavenly things. As it is, you invite us to dinner but do not point out your house; you assert a kingdom but show us no palace. Can it be that your Christ promises a kingdom of heaven without having a heaven, just as he displayed himself a man without having flesh? What a phantom, the whole of it! What a hollow show of a mighty promise!